


Yuca Con Azúcar

by magicalgirlmania



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-06-12
Packaged: 2018-10-31 17:22:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10903998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicalgirlmania/pseuds/magicalgirlmania
Summary: The night lives of seven kids- Pidge, an IT person for the local cinema; Hunk, a prodigious chef; Shiro, a deaf art curator; Lance, a charismatic public defender; Allura, a young banker; Keith, a stylish bartender; and Matthew, who no one knows anything about -begins to overlap with their real world jobs and problems.A murder-mystery AU.





	1. 2520 NW 2nd Ave

**Author's Note:**

> The setting, locations, and businesses (such as restaurants, bars, and neighborhoods) are all real places, existent in the urban area of Miami-Dade county.  
> If there are any grammatical mistakes or errors in the Spanish or otherwise not English dialogue, please feel free to correct me.  
> I have used my own knowledge, experience, and training to ensure the authenticity and validity of all events mentioned throughout the story, reinforced by extensive research. If you observe any fallacies or flaws in these subsequent processes, please feel free to correct me.

There was a stick of raw sugarcane stuck between his teeth, and he looked like a cowboy, sucking the robust body of a smoking Cuban cigar that dropped chewed fragments of the sweet into his uncut beard. He had no leather holster for a gun, no tasseled jacket to bolster or sheep to herd. No, all he owned was sitting limply on his back, his once proud chest, neither fitting nor becoming of his slender frame. Everything else he did once own sat behind him, in a bay, on an island, ninety miles away; he had lost it all right there, too young and naive to understand his gambling could have never come to fruition. And it was tragic, that he had to realize that as a kid, with a gun in his hand, seeing not only the white of the iris but the red of those veins, those branching rivers of blood, in the enemy’s eyes. At one point, he did have a Cuban cigar stuck between his teeth, because it was the smokescreen that would hide away those veins for decades upon decades.

But now he walked, he walked with sugarcane in his mouth, because it was the only free item on the bar menu in Wynwood. He had bid off all his pride a long time ago, and so he had no misgivings in walking into those full bars, each seat at its capacity with young and white rich boys, no more older than teenagers, toasting to the even younger girls who were as poor as these boys were rich, sitting in their laps, smiling through their underlying desperation to make a buck, and asking the bartender for a small stick of sugarcane. Far before these boys were conceived, he had been sitting in their place too, without humility, without shame, continuing in the sadistic ritual of age that American money had reaped in the fertile soil of masculine uncertainties. It was a cycle that was both cruel and blithe, ecstatic for one partaker and virulent for the other sitting next to him.

“Excuse me, can I have a piece of sugarcane? Just one piece will be all,” he asked.

His entire body was being pushed into the granite bar top by curves scarcely covered in satin fabric and shoulders bulging and pulling at their collars. The electronic screech of the acoustics in the place was staggering, and he had to tense every muscle in his jaw to keep from shaking. The bartender could not open his mouth over the sheer sound of the convulsing noise, so he shook his head in a good conjecture of the man’s indignity.

“Here,” a dark girl said, “I’m leaving anyways, ¿Necesitas a alguien que te lleve a casa?”

The stick of sugar was still wet from her drink, saturated with the alcoholic green of her mojito.

“Sólo necesito el azúcar, gracias.” He clarified- “La caña de azúcar, lo siento.”

She chuckled, and the white fabric of her dress shifted lasciviously, almost mockingly, as she stood from her chair, as if to say “I am poor, but you will never be able to afford this!”

That was her rebellion, he observed, as his hands traced the bottom residue of spray paint cans that were splattered into clear pictures on the brick walls surrounding the entire complex of vices and families. At least she will not go to war for her rebellion, he also observed, as he pulled at each door sitting on each dark doorstep. One finally gave way to his will, and he trekked inside, each nerve reflexively on alert in the lack of light. The soles of his boots treaded on the concrete flooring with a soft, marginally audible rubber squeak. There were no couches yet, no couches in any of the rooms on the first floor, so he traveled even deeper into the hallway. There was a tag jabbing into the backside of his ankle, and with each step, the stiff fabric would prick at his sore skin, and it was so irritating that he misstepped without caution.

Broken glass crunched underneath his feet with the acute sound of a gunshot. He immediately looked down to assess the damage. His initial examination appeared to be a beer bottle, or some alcoholic beverage of the like, but the chips of glass were too thick and too large in area to be from a bottle. He had a neighbor, someone in the building staying with him.

There was a muffled, shrill voice carrying down the walls, faintly echoing a cry of need. He tracked the voice with a run. It became louder and louder, until it was distinctly that of a female’s, locked behind a bedroom door cascading with bullet holes and an alcohol stain the size of a dripping puddle. He pressed his face to the wood, covered in a thin gray layer of dust, with a curious scent, and through the bullet hole, he saw the dark girl. Her red lips were gagged, her white dress was tied to her ribs with almost intentionally embarrassing and revealing offense to her body, with her wrists and ankles caught up in rope behind her back. She lay on her side, eyes wide and begging him, begging him to break down the door.

He did not even try the handle, he tried once, twice, three times to ram down the door with his body; the hinges were rusted with vodka and tequila and it broke on the fourth attempt.

“What is your name?” he shouted to her, as he ripped off the gag from her mouth, moist with booze and residual lipstick, as well as her tears.

“Nyma,” she cried.

“Do you have a cellphone?” He pulled out an archaic army knife, dull with decades of neglect and misuse. She squirmed when it caught the moonlight from the shattered window. He precisely cut at the binds on her wrists and ankles, and her arms fell limply to the floor, fatigued.

“No,” Nyma cried, less afraid and more regretful.

“Do you know where you live?”

He guided the blade through the rope around her chest with his thumb, squinting, beginning to wheeze. Her dress was already loose around her shoulders, evidence that someone had yanked her by the collar, tearing at her hips, and the cloth easily fell apart at the slightest touch from her blade.

“Forgive me, I hope this dress did not cost that much.”

“I am alive, that’s what matters. Overtown, I live in Overtown.” She pulled her arms out of the long sleeves, right then left, leaving her upper body naked in an understanding way; she quickly covered her chest by wrapping the white limbs around her back and front again, knotting them at the wrists. “Who are you?”

“My name is Matthew. Who did this to you?” he asked. It came out as aggressive, even begrudgingly, and he had no remorse for the disgust he held against the culprit who had preyed on the young girl. He was panting now, his bronchioles tightening; the peculiar gray dust was swirling around them in the moonlight.

“He will be back soon, we must leave-” They were rudely interrupted by two gunshots. Nyma’s eyes widened in horror, lifted to the ceiling, which shook threateningly, bits of the plaster crumbling and falling to the floor as it recoiled from the bullet wounds.

A man appeared in the doorframe, a black leather finger hovering over the trigger of a pistol. Matthew charged at him, knife cocked fiercely in his grip. The butt of the pistol made contact with his forehead, but not before his eyes met with the red veins he had always despised, and Matthew knew he had lost once again to the enemy. Nyma screamed a blood-curdling cry of murder, but she was silenced by the man too.


	2. 551 Lincoln Rd

An old vinyl record was playing, but Blondie wasn’t singing. Despite the uncounted but abundant potholes and scratches the floppy plastic had collected over the years, decades- and probably centuries, or at least it felt like it -it still played on, with the same guitar riffs, the same symphonies, the same notes, yet somewhat duller, somewhat flatter, but never disappointing. The thin disc, like an alien from another galaxy, had seen so much in so many years that it was almost as wise as mankind itself: from dust storms in the western deserts with no belts or boundaries to colliding gases and hot precipitation at storm fronts, it knew science, it knew life, and it knew love. It knew what a heart of glass was made of.

“Once I had a love, and it was a gas,” Keith hummed, tugging at the zipper on his white chinos to the tune.

“Soon turned out, had a heart of glass!” he continued, slamming his foot on the bathtub ledge with a satisfying sting.

“Seemed like the real thing, only to fi-i-nd-” He raised his chest to the ceiling and held fast to the melodramatic note in his throat -”Mucho mistrust, love's gone behind!” The refrain ended as he stretched his jacquard-knit socks all the way to his knees, the seams ripping at his soles. 

He cringed at the sound, stuttering out “Once I had a love and it was divine” as he peeked over his bent knee and picked at the loose black ends.

Keith could outsing Blondie any day with a pitch as loud as his, if his chords were warm enough (or the heater tank underneath the shower was on), but he whispered anyways, an old habit outliving old days. The only neighbor he had couldn’t even hear a gunshot, let alone his rhythmic screaming, which, now that he considered it, was a real fire hazard. 

“Soon found out I was losing my mind,” Keith huffed, walking into the kitchen with a striped shirt caught on his ears. He struggled with the collar, jerking at the neckband until his fingers slipped into the chest pocket he had forgot was there.  
His brother sighed. 

The morning light was filtering through the striped cloth like a coffee filter, distorting his sight and making the glossy countertops glow with a white, cirrus halo that disappeared as quick as it had befallen him. 

“You aren’t a day younger than four,” Shiro signed with a grin, chuckling.

“Very funny,” Keith signed back, then smacking his brother with the back of his palm. He looked down at his stomach, flattening arbitrary spots on the shirt. He smacked Shiro again. “You wrinkled it, asshole!” Keith signed, emphasizing his profanity with a forced quirk of his wrist.

Shiro was laughing into his coffee mug, almost choking as the searing liquid splattered onto his nose and mouth. 

“And that’s what you get!” Keith was smirking. “Charma!” he signed and shouted simultaneously, walking past his brother and slipping into a seat at the countertop.

While Shiro searched the cabinet for another mug, Keith tore the silver packaging of a toaster strudel with his teeth and popped it onto a napkin. He recoiled at the hot sting the wrapper left on his tongue, fanning his fingers violently against the air as he bit his lip. 

“What record are you playing today?” Shiro asked after setting the mug down.

Keith grinned. “Heart of glass,” he muttered into the burning pastry, as the artificially colored filling dribbled down his chin.

“First of all, I can’t read your lips when you’re eating, you know that,” Shiro signed. “Second of all, you’re not supposed to microwave those things. They’re called toaster strudels for a reason.”

Keith rolled his eyes. “Heart of Glass,” he signed with a shrug.

“Again?!”

“Hey, leave Blondie alone!” Keith shouted at him, pointing his toaster strudel at him defensively.

“Thank God I’ll never have to hear her again,” Shiro signed, shaking his head with a smile.

Keith threw the pastry on the napkin. “Don’t talk like that, please,” he signed back.

“How does it go again?” Shiro signed, straining to remember the song. “Once I had a love and it was a gas-” His hand movements were slow and hesitant, and the signing was awkward, unsure if his translation was even slightly correct.

Keith watched on with a snicker.

“-Soon turned out to be a pain in the ass!” And Shiro reached across the counter, pinching Keith’s cheek.

“Ow, ow, ow, ow!” he hissed, cradling his face in his hand.

“Text me when you get to the school,” Shiro signed.

“I will,” Keith signed back.

As his brother turned away to button his jacket, he let out an inaudible sigh, that only he and Blondie and the dog could hear. Before Shiro walked out the door, Keith kneeled down to the service dog, who obediently sat at the doorstep every morning and every evening, waiting for the veteran and his little brother to call on his active duty.

“Don’t chew on his shoes anymore- I know it’s you.”

The dog whined an alibi, a defense of poor quality. He pointed an accusing finger at his collar, frowning.

“Hey, employee discounts are tough to negotiate on shoes! Don’t be a dick like Shiro!” 

 

Keith pedaled so fast the red beach cruiser could have been mistaken for a motorcycle by speeding taxi cabs, even with the poor paint job. His morning commute was the pinpoint cause of his caffeine addiction-

“¡¿Estás ciego?!”

-and so were the other commuters. It was difficult to convince Shiro to allow him to drink even an ounce over one mug of coffee, but in his defense, at least it wasn’t alcohol. That too had its fallacies, as alcohol was his night job, and it never really had proved itself to be a great example for him, character-wise. The irony was that many of these taxi cab drivers and drunkards on the road were the same sort of people who came to him when the sun was down for drinks, for that tiny shot of tequila that went straight to the head or this bit of rum at the bottom of the the bottle that would sink almost the same, directly to the bottom of your gut. 

“¡No hablo estúpido!”

The driver honked with displeasure at his smart mouth. 

As he reached the other end of the crossroad, he made a quick turn at the beginning of the next block and biked down the narrow sidewalk for a couple more feet, display windows blinking like headlights on his left and abandoned cars spaced along the curb in a poorly drawn line to his right. The pavement fed into a dingy alleyway, and he took his time with this turn, heaving out a breath of relief as he eased the breaks into a stop and smoothly slid himself off the bike frame. The concrete was riddled with potholes brewing with steamy pools of sewage, car residue, and rainwater still sitting around from summer, and he had to weave his bike tires scrupulously through the street to its hidden corner behind the dumpster.

Other employees, kids who lived in the complexes only a mile or two from the traffic boundaries of his, biked to work too. Although they were all characteristic of some missing zeros at the end of their bank statements, it was physically conspicuous who out of them had the most favorable numbers by the condition of their bikes. Shiny coats of chrome paint, handles bent straight in the right places, freshly oiled gears, gears so oily you’d think he was eating his breakfast during morning rush hour on 907. No matter the amount left on their credit card, those bikes still ended up in the same polluted alleyway, behind the same greasy dumpster, chained together by the same shoddy chain and lock.

Keith slipped through the backdoor, swiping at the heels of his slip-on sneakers with the sleeve of his cardigan.

“God, I hope you didn’t buy that here.”

“Shut up Rolo.”

Rolo scowled. 

“I don’t care what you say, that shit is disgusting. Do you do that shit in front of your mother?”

Keith flicked the dirt at him, glaring. He didn’t flinch.

“Hell no, but I do it in front of my brother.”

“Y’know, it’s days like these where I wish they hadn’t hired you,” Rolo said, leaning back with his foot against the wall.

“It’s mornings like these when I see your face and I wished I had stay in law school, but do you hear me complaining?” Keith slammed the door behind me and inserted the key. “No,” he answered.

He hesitated.

“Shit, was that the last of us?” Keith asked.

“Yeah, about that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song is "Heart of Glass" sung and written by Blondie.


	3. 501 Lincoln Road

“From Your Honor’s lockup list is number fifteen, United States versus Alden Jones Iverson-”

“Lance!” an attorney exclaimed.

“Quiet, Ms. Plaxum!”

“My apologies, Your Honor!”

The courtroom was overflowing with the attorneys in her office, and Adelita Plaxum’s voice was only one of a hundred shouting legal terms and dead Latin expressions from across the room and back, as the judge slammed his gavel to the pulse of the room, the heart of the public defender’s office, as a stream of convicts flowed in and out, in and out, like a circulatory system was running through the entire building. There was barely enough oxygen in the stuffy room to allow respiration, as the business dress code just wouldn’t allow it, the entirety of them- with no exception to the judge -choking on their buttoned-up collars as the starchy fabric melted in the draught of raw heat that rolled off every body in the room. The cotton suit jackets were a torture device of the court, most lawyers had concluded.

“Lo siento, Lancito. ¿Estás teniendo una buena mañana? He oído que usted está consiguiendo un nuevo caso,” Adelita exclaimed, blowing chipperly at her coffee.

Lance fell into his chair huffing out a sigh. “Ay Dios mío mi prima, no puedo manejar más este lío. Que el rayo me golpee si no es la verdad.”

“Oh, stop it!” Adelita exclaimed, smacking him with the back of her palm.

“You know, I almost ran over a guy today, on Lincoln Road, right?”

“Was he cute?” Adelita asked, eyes widening.

“¡Dios mios, no!” Lance scoffed. “¡¿Qué te pasa, chica?! He had the most hideous haircut I have ever laid eyes on! If I had run him over, I would have been doing him a favor his barber obviously couldn’t!” He clapped his hands together as if to wipe dust off palms, scowling.

“That’s a felony Lancito and you know it!”

“You know what should be a felony, Adelita?”

“What?”

“Mullets.”

“Lo admito, lo admito.”

“Excuse me, Mr. McClain and Ms. Plaxum?”

Their feet snapped to the floor in unison. 

“Yes, Your Honor?” 

“This room is not to be used for your gossiping, am I understood?” he scolded. “And please refrain from using Spanish in this courtroom, or at least, not in mine.”

“Yes, Your Honor! My apologies, Your Honor!” Adelita exclaimed profusely, but Lance was already leaning indifferently on the spine of his chair.

“Man, what a gringo,” Lance said through gritted teeth.

“As if! Who are you to talk, Mr. McClain?” Adelita retorted, taking a sip from her coffee. “Ay! Still too hot!” she exclaimed, fanning her tongue as tears welled up in her eyes.

“What! You remember the last time I had them use my father’s name!” Lance exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air in exasperation.

“I should concede again,” Adelita admitted. “That was quite the fiasco.” She giggled. “That judge almost charged you with contempt of court for trying to correct your own name. ¡Qué gracioso! Hey, would you pay me to defend you in court?”

Lance tapped his finger against his lip for a moment, considering the question. “No. That’s Spanish for no, Adelita.”

She almost choked on her coffee. “Now look what you’ve done, I’m going to waste all this good café con leche!”

“¡Chica!” Lance gasped. “Where did you get some? Is it, you know, auténtico?”

“Only second to abuela’s!” Adelita bragged, taunting his eyes with the cup. “Here, I’ll tell you a little secret: Yuca makes a limited amount in the morning.”

“And I was just by there this morning!” Lance groaned, throwing his head back with a glower of jealousy.

“Eh, how do you Americans say it in English? Too bad, so sad?” Adelita said, raising an eyebrow as she tried to recall the saying.

“That is correct.”

“Ay, if it isn’t mi chico, Bruno Swirn! ¿Qué bolá contigo, eh?” Adelita asked.

“Fine. Why’s Lancito crying again?” Bruno follow up, nodding in Lance’s direction. He let out another moan.

“Eh, who knows anymore,” Adelita shrugged. “Tell us what you’re really here for though, huh? Let’s see the new cases!”

“Sheesh, relax. Who let her have coffee again?” Bruno chuckled, handing her a beige folder, holding inside the cover a thin packet of police reports, citizenship documents, and prefaces stapled neatly together by one of the court clerks.

She handed her coffee to Lance (who took a great long swig of the paper cup before she could refuse him the right) and tore through the folder with indifference to propriety. She whined, complaining to them both “another drug case!” before snatching the cup out of Lance’s grasp.

“Lancito is going to have fun with this one,” Bruno smirked, flipping through the contents of his folder. “Oy, you remember that old TV show, Hart to Hart?”

Lance gave him a deadpan expression. “You’re kidding me, right?”

“Nope.” He tossed the file to him.

Lance threw the folder open to the first page, a list of charges. He read them off, each one more painful to utter than the last.

“Third-degree murder, sexual battery, intent to distribute, trafficking, possession of over one-hundred-fifty kilograms of cocaine- that’s a first-degree felony!” he exclaimed. 

“Estoy en la fuacata. No, no, I take that back! ¡Él está en la fuacata!”

“Only God can help you now, Lancito,” Adelita said. 

“Who’s the guy being charged?” Bruno asked.

“Matthew Holt,” Lance said sternly.

“Get Matthew Holt, please,” a clerk called.

“Look!” Adelita was pointing at the bar. “Is that him? It looks like him! Here, let me see that photo again.”

“Next on Your Honor’s lockup list is number seventeen, United States versus Matthew Birger Holt.”

Lance stood from his chair to catch a glimpse of the so-called guilty man. As Matthew walked through the door on the left-hand-side of the well and approached the bar, his wrists bound by heavy-duty steel cuffs, he carried himself with as much dignity as a man of his stature could muster in such a trying situation. He walked straight, one foot in front of the other, his chin lifted rigidly against his erect back; the security personnel herding him towards the judge were completely unnecessary, but rather appropriate in an erroneous demonstration to flaunt the destitute status of the defendant.

“Good evening, Your Honor,” Matthew said to the judge.

“You’re done for, Lancito,” Adelita whispered, but all three of them were too engrossed in this peculiar man to respond.

The judge ignored him entirely, and instead turned to the clerk, but Matthew persisted.

“I must apologize for my inappropriate attire,” he continued.

“Is Mr. Holt’s attorney present?” the judge asked, unamused.

“Your Honor, we have had trouble finding a suitable attorney for Mr. Holt, due to an overfilling of cases in the defender’s office-”

“Sounds about right,” the three attorneys breathed in distaste.

“-We just assigned cases this morning, Your Honor,” the clerk explained.

The judge considered this for a moment, tapping his pen against the arm of his chair.

“May I see the charges?” the judge asked.

“Yes, Your Honor,” and the clerk passed him a copy, attached to the extraneous police report.

“Let’s see here.” He paused, assessing the full extent of the list. “Mr. Holt, you are being accused of not only a first-degree felony associated with the possession, trafficking, and distribution of cocaine, a schedule two drug, but on top of that, third-degree murder and the sexual battery of Nyma Mojisola, or as colloquially known in this courthouse, rape. Do you understand the charges held against you?”

“Yes, Your Honor.”

“Does Mr. Holt have means of support? By evaluation of his appearance, I would presume not.”

The outdated military uniform that sat limply on his slender frame was garish, in that it was so old Lance could not even remember seeing such an accouterment on Cuban guerillas tripping down from the mountaintops. The effete patch on his shoulder did not spell out his name, but rather implicated he had stole it from another man or unit. His beard was scruffy if not tacky, shaved in the most arbitrary of places by what Lance could only describe as the crudest knife the Swiss could produce. His hair was the most criminal aspect about him; the full bust of it sat on the ends of his neck, unevenly grown, as if he had attempted to cut it straight through with a blade but gave up in the middle of the endeavor, with the ends crimped and his bangs curled, moist with grease and oils and sweat.

“He’s indigent, Your Honor,” the clerk summarized.

“The court then will appoint new counsel.”

“Excuse me, Your Honor,” the clerk interjected. “I believe that I can confirm this case has already been appointed to an attorney, as of this hearing.”

“Then can you tell me who has the case?”

“Lance Alvarez McClain, Your Honor.”

“That would be me, Your Honor,” Lance said, stepping into the aisle between the benches. The annealed corners of the police report was burning rigid lines into his skin, and it felt like loaded gun in his hand. “But, if I may object, Your Ho-”

“Let the records show that Mr. McClain with the Public Defender’s Office of Miami-Dade County will represent Mr. Holt,” the judge said, the name forced from his firm lips with a markedly sharp tone.

“Your Honor,” Lance said, more forcefully this time. “I must object to this appointment, I'm due for vacation in two days, I haven’t had a vacation in years. This has to be a clerical mistake.”

“Mr. McClain, please accompany Mr. Holt and interview him,” the judge continued, unsympathetic.

“I have to take the Foreign Services Officer Test in a week! I can’t take this case!” Lance exclaimed. “Your Honor, please-”

“We will pass this case,” the judge gravely reasserted, “and Mr. McClain, I see it wise to advise you that you will do better as a foreign officer when you learn to listen to your superiors.”

Lance’s knuckles were white with the tension palpitating through his muscles, and the police report was crunching and folding in on itself under the force of his palms. “Yes, Your Honor.”

 

“¡Ese juez te evisceró! Oy, ¿tienes cerveza?” Bruno asked, throwing himself onto the couch.

“No seas tonto, hermano mío. Ese juez sólo estaba siendo mezquino, lo cual era innecesario,” Adelita sighed, chucking her coffee cup into the trash bin. “Oh, what is our Lancito to do?”

Lance did not respond to their commentary. The door spoke for him, as he slammed the wooden article into the frame, making the cheap plaster on the walls tremble with internal damage. The window with his name painted in black, arial letters was anamorphic from the interior of the office, the glass even lacking translucency. The hard-featured, disfigured font served as a reminder to him and his fellow colleagues of the tight, economic budget that they worked on, as palatable for the government to describe, though it didn’t take three years of an annual salary like his and a bachelor’s degree in political science to realize that translated to “stingy” on his weekly paychecks. Or just irony, depending on which way you liked to drink in the evening.

“Can you believe this - this bullshit! Ese juez, the nerve of him, mete tremenda muela!” Lance yelled to no one in particular, stomping over to his refrigerator.

“Right, we get that, but the beer Lancito!” Bruno shouted from his indolent position on the couch.

The can hit him square in the center of his forehead, and Bruno spoke no more. 

“How am I supposed to study for this test if I’m stuck on a case that I know I’m not going to win?” Lance shouted, ripping the zipper loose on his pants with abandon. 

“Lance, what are you doing?” Adelita asked. Her eyes widened in terror, and she turned away from the boy as he stripped to his briefs.

“I mean, it’s not like I ever had anything going for me as an attorney, right?” Lance yelled to the floor as he pulled his slacks over his shoes. “Dammit, I knew it! I just knew everyone would catch onto me!” he laughed, devoid of any humor. “I’m just the young up-and-coming nobody who only even got accepted into law school because they saw a bright opportunity for themselves when they decided to throw me onto the affirmative action payroll after some white kid dropped out. ¡Suerte la mía! Whoop-de-doo!”  
He kicked his slacks under his desk, collecting dust as it slid against the floor.

“I’ve wasted all the years that were supposed to be the beginning of my adult life on what- Mobsters? Drug lords? Murderers?” He had a newfound sense of hostility towards buttons; the seams along his front whimpered in agony as he tore the dress shirt down the middle. 

“The worst- maybe even the stupidest part about this is that I like my job. I like the people I work with. But I have no life!” Lance yelled. He snatched a hanger off his clothes rack, the wire frame shivering against the sudden impact with the bar. “I want to fall in love, but I’m surrounded by crooks and politicians of the like. I want to travel, I have no time! I want to buy a house, I have no money! I can’t even remember the last time I saw a movie- 1984? 1985 even?

“What are you talking about?” Adelita exclaimed, chewing on her cheek. She was shielding her turned eyes from Lance’s bare body, but it was anything but bare- his missing slacks revealed the chubbies he was wearing underneath, crinkled from the three-hour commute that kept the fabric pressed tight to his thighs.

“Huh?” She peeked through her fingers. “Ay Dios mío, ¿por qué te haces esto a ti mismo? Why would you wear shorts under your pants!”

“It’s almost a hundred degrees outside, chica! Qué quieres que haga, to die of heat a stroke?” he said, bringing his hands to his hips, on the defensive. “Traje informal de negocios, my ass! This suit cost an arm and a leg, and I frankly don’t have the paycheck to take sweat stains on the chin, so you can take it up with the feds if you have a problem with it, Ms. Adelita Plaxum!”

 

“I’ll take a Cuba libre on the rocks, one slice of lime, the darkest rum you’ve got, and make it so cold that the hell in my head freezes over.”

Lance dropped his load on the bar with a singular stride, coasting through the kitchen doors with an arrant and bare face, hands sagging in his pockets. The busboys waved their plates at him, toasting their cloudy champagne glasses with dishwater as he tramped by, a cheer of Latin obscenities that the genial cooks whooped to, clapping spatulas against rusty pot bottoms in a rich sort of snort that sizzled like spices in the kitchen flames. He had to caper around the stainless steel racks of antiquated appliances blackened by their generations like rings on a tree to dodge another bruise on his forehead; the oily assembly line of feu de joie that would singe the buttons off his vest.

“Oy, Hunk!” Lance shouted, dusting off his chest. 

“Hey, m’dude!” Hunk pulled his goggles over his head with a snap of the elastic band. “Where have you been?”

“Nowhere new,” Lance grinned. “Damn, what’s up with these?” he asked, flicking the bulky lenses on Hunk’s forehead.

“Didn’t wanna get my eyebrows burnt off, these guys are expensive to groom!” Hunk laughed.

“Well I’d say!” And they locked their hands together with a sharp clap, Lance punching Hunk in the arm as he firmly shook his shoulder in return. 

“So you got a line-up or some requests or what?” Hunk asked.

“Honestly dude? I’m playing this all by ear myself,” Lance chuckled, rubbing the back of his neck. “I haven’t done a set since college, and even then no joint would pick me up.”

“Then I guess I’ll have to take the credit for being the first to invest in this future rock star,” Hunk joked. “Gosh, if you end up taking some role on a Spanish soap opera, I might actually hate you.”

“You and me both, dude,” Lance said. “But seriously, thank you. I owe you for this job with like, my life.”

“Don’t worry about it Lance,” Hunk said. “Now get out there, all star,” and he shoved him out the kitchen door, a laugh barely latent behind the teeth of a smirk at the sound of Lance’s heels shrieking against the tiled floor. 

“Alright, alright!” Lance laughed, dodging a whip or two of Hunk’s twisted kitchen towel. He rubbed his hip with a wince.

The bartender had disappeared; left in his place was a sweating glass of water, a surface so plain that the lukewarm clarity was missing it’s distinctive polar icebergs. Lance brought the glass to his face, holding it precariously at the rim with a covert sort of disgust for the drink. The twitching corners of his glower revealed no amusement for the bartender’s mistake, who decided to disappear by instinctive luck at the right time, or else he would have needed a new set of ugly black sweats. Lance set the glass down on the stainless white countertop, letting it’s heavy bottom carry with gravity the increasing weight of his tensity. The thud echoed back to him all the way across the empty dining room and up the stairway, ricocheting through his skull like the growl pushing against the sides of his jaw. 

His guitar case lurched into his side as he approached the second floor landing and his fingers let the handle detach from his slipping grip, the guitar knocking wood before his feet could throw a step past the last stair.

“Hello?” The voice was so flat it almost sounded dead to the core of it’s senses. The eyes of it were just as cold, peering from behind the wall that obscured its face too.

Lance hesitated, hunched uncomfortably over the landing with his leg stretched behind him, hands bent on his knee, as he considered the fate of the guitar. He left it there, breathing out a rough grunt as he shrugged himself to the bar. 

The boy went back to cleaning the beer mug in his towel.

“Hey, what’s the deal man?” Lance asked. The question came through gritted teeth. “If I wanted a glass of water, I would have asked for it.”

“We don’t serve drinks until seven.” His eyes never left the cloud on the glass.

“Bullshit!” Lance exclaimed, slamming his palm against the counter.

The bartender sighed, setting the glass next to his mountain of opened liquor bottles, just waiting to be poured. 

“Listen pal, you’ve got a headache, take an aspirin, but don’t do it with alcohol.”

“You’re a bartender, who the hell are you to be talking?” 

He shifted on his heel, lips poised for another round of quickly-fixed shots, but he choked on his words a second too late. The plastic face of a driver’s license slapped against his forehead, and he barely caught it as it fell to his palm and then through his fingertips, taken aback by the sudden sting of blindness. He strained to recognize the blurry photo, then saw it was his own sight blurring, and raised it practically to his brow as he stared at the profile. 

“You want a copy of that picture?” Lance scoffed. “I am pretty photogenic, even for the poor cameramen at the DMV.”

“Well, Mister Al... Al-ver-es- How do I know this isn’t a fake?” the bartender asked with narrowed eyes.

Lance scowled. “It’s Álvarez, Al-va-rez!”

“You look too old to be as good-looking as this guy!” he shouted, pointing angrily at the pocket-sized photograph, those cold eyes suddenly alight with indignation.

Lance blanched. 

The bartender tossed the flimsy card across the countertop. There was a slight tremble on his lips, illegible through the entanglement of sudden insinuations being created in that moment. He turned on his heel with a swelling pride that forced him to swallow the embarrassment rising to the surface, and he could feel it climb through his skin, biting at his fingers with a terrible sensation.

There was laughter. 

“Is that sexual tension I sense?” Lance simpered, the pitch of a coo in the back of his throat.

“Shuddup.” The glass was still cloudy.

“No need to be shy about Happy Hour buddy!”

“Seriously dude?”

“You know, this is very romantic, the whole playing-hard-to-get thing?”

“You want a drink or what!” the bartender exclaimed, throwing his hands in the air, exasperated.

Lance chuckled, experimenting with the smirk on his lips. “I want your name.”

“Am I a wine? A beer? I’ve always been bad at charades.” His finger tapped against the bartop.

“Cute,” Lance said, leaning his chin against his palm. “You're cute.”

“We don’t serve that one,” he hissed in a low voice, leaning into the bar. He could no longer feel the nerves running along the inside of his fists, impulsively shifting ever so closer to the neck across the counter.

Lance looked him up and down and up again, museful in brisk, and then said, “No, but it does come in a pretty small glass.”

“It’s Keith, dammit!” the bartender shouted, clamping his hand against his temple.

“Can I have a bit of that, Keith? Though, good alcohol tends to be fine in age.”

“I swear to God, if you don’t tell me what is that you want, I’m going to-”

“Cállate, cállate!” Lance exclaimed, drawing back from Keith’s accusing finger. “I’ll order something, I’ll order something!”

“What’ll it be, jackass?” Keith asked. 

“A Cuba Libre. Please.” 

When the bartender turned his back to him, Lance’s shoulders fell from tension as he looked down at his shirt, pinching the cloth from his chest, looking for any stains, brushing at the impalpable dust left from hot words that missed it’s aimed mark. The easy scent of caffeinated coca-cola, lighter in this sense than it was in calories, made the cracking of the tin tab even more satisfying. It wasn’t a beer, but it wasn’t pure water either- a flimsy affirmation of his terrible drinking habits, and with that admission, his diet in tow. 

Keith, as the bartender was newly dubbed, worked nimbly with his poisons. Lance was transfixed by how smoothly the take-off of a full bottle was, and how brazen the landing of an empty glass bottle could be, all in the hazy, echoing palms of a boy’s whose temperament was just as cloudy. He wasn’t thinking, you could tell, as he let the dark rum, superfluous in nature, with its golden shine and unbroken, burnished tide fall one ounce, two ounces, three then quickly five into an unruly shoal of ice and coke. It burned, it hissed at those ice cubes, and the disturbance went undaunted by Keith, liquor licking his fingers as it splashed over the sides. It was cold, he knew that because common sense told him so, but still, his flesh betrayed him. 

He could have spilled the whole damn drink and Lance wouldn’t have thought anything of it. He was so transfixed by the bartender’s hair, he wanted to reach across the bar and grab him by the tightly-tied ponytail hanging at the back of his head. 

The heels of his shoes pulled stiffly against the mounting beam of the chair, Lance shifted forward. The glint of a kitchen knife was caught in his eye and he froze. It’s edge broke the skin of a lime, it’s body then twisted unnaturally, falling into the drink with the same fate as the rum. 

“He- What the hell are you staring at?” Keith shouted over his shoulder. The knife was still in his hand, but it was out of mind and therefore out of sight to Lance.

“Is that - that thing on the back of your head,” he said, pointing at it, “is that a mullet?”

Keith brushed him off with a wave of his hand. “Take a picture pal, it’ll last you longer.”

“And at that, I’m going to need a bigger glass,” Lance replied. He glanced at the drink, as dark as the bar napkin beneath it, and scoffed. “Also, take-backs on all those pick-up lines. Mullets are a deal breaker, my friend.”

“As long as you give me your credit-card number, I’ll be just fine. Traumatized? Slightly,” Keith sighed, hands on his hip as he surveyed the still empty dining rooms. “But fine.”

“I’ll say,” Lance thought. And he threw back the glass, gulping down the drink with a high-handed fervor.


	4. 846 Lincoln Rd

The camry had not aged well, nor had Shiro. It’s once dazzling crimson exterior was studded with light scratch scars and dents as deep as potholes and wider than the ones that sink. They were the laurels of war, constant skirmishes with the elements and the enemy that left him in a constant state of expectation for an active threat. It’s one thing to see the enemy- to know with your eyes that he’s honking his horn and that he’s waving his fists and he’s now suddenly becoming uncomfortably close in the rearview mirror -but another to hear him.

Shiro couldn’t. As he jogged through the parking lot, he couldn’t hear the next car over swing open it’s door and buckle his side mirror. As he slammed his foot into the brakes on a red light, he couldn’t hear the bumper behind him dig a dent into his tail light. As he drove through the underpass, he couldn't hear the puck-sized rocks forcefully lodge themselves into his roof. Smack. Screech. Bump. Shiro couldn’t hear any of it. Those animated cinematic sound-effects became all too real for him to bear no less hear, and so they became the flatly-printed onomatopoeia on a flatly-pressed page of paper he read in the newspaper those days.

The camry, too, couldn’t hear anything. Instead, it felt everything. The penetrating momentum transferred from a door to a mirror as the two objects collided on the same steel dimension. The impetus of a rippling vibration as it tore through the bumper and then through the fading leather chairs. The resonance that carried the pressure of gravity on a rock to the roof then the ceiling and down the windows with a tremor. And Shiro loved that connection to feeling, that bond between his nervous system and the gasoline engine. The rumble that carried through his spine instead of his ear canal, the horn that screamed into his hands and not into his cochlea.  
The newspaper was nothing compared to his Hollywood days. Those dull, almost tangible syllables painted so clearly onto stop signs and speed limits and bumper stickers he saw every day through the rush hours of the mornings and afternoons were so easy to tolerate. He had spent very few years in the world of sound, compared to his years on the periphery of it; but such an exile seemed more tolerable in some hours than others. What once was an endless, outwardly infinite landing of asphalt, thrown into a flashing shoot-out of carbon dioxide and the sound of tanks exploding, brakes somehow breaking at impassable speeds, became melancholy, finite in its narrow width- finite in its capacity to hold so many people down to a single lane. Silence. Impenetrable, as absolute as a red light; even watertight, he could say, resistant to the cordial tapping of the rain on the window. 

And then there were other hours, that really were shoot-outs. Storm clouds mushrooming overhead. Explosions, real explosions, from real tanks. Cars were for the civilians, tanks were for the soldiers; an average man hides behind a leather steering wheel, a general hides behind his khaki green ramparts. But this rule, this distinction, became as blurry as a windshield in a hurricane. The solid, white lines separating his camry and the car over could dig itself into a foxhole. The car top carriers resembled artillery guns, carrying shells of sensitive but fulminating ammunition instead of beach plastic toys and inflatable rafts. From the pervading fourteen-story high towers that enclosed him and this inescapable warzone, the refutable circular tip of a rifle flittered by at forty-five miles per hour at every block and stop. Yet it was his ears that betrayed him, not his eyes. 

The trepidation in the pulse of a pre-detonated landmine, like a heartbeat in a clock, slow and steady and decisive. Then the post-detonation, that split-second before the shriek of the combustion erupting with such gravity that it pushed your flesh into your ribcage. And if you survived that, the hesitant shifting of a finger- gloved, never naked -hovering over the cold steel trigger by just an atom, just a thought or a prayer to whatever god of mercy there was, before the bullet whistled into your window and into your head and into your permanent memories, literally lodged in your hippocampus. And if you lived maybe a second or two past that, maybe, just maybe, you’d hear the screams. A civilian? A general? It doesn’t matter, they all scream the same, because they’re all made of the cheap chemicals and hormones that made them man in the first place. A dying man. And in those other hours, it felt like Shiro was dying too.

Despite that though, man always had a companion. Paralyzed, foot stuck to the brake, all the windows fogging up, someone would tug at his sleeve, lick the palm of his hand, and assure him that his Hollywood days were far, far behind him- in fact, an entire ocean and one continent behind him, to be exact. And Shiro, resisting the vision, the failure of his sight, his only window left to the world around him, would come back, as if from unconsciousness. He’d smile weakly at the dog in the front seat, scratch the fur on his neck, and hit the gas pedal.

Hollywood days, that’s what he called them. How picturesque it made it all sound. It was a funny phrase to sign.   
“Hollywood” was just a shifting of his hands from one side of the body to the other, but “day” was not as simple, and it required a playful motion inspired by a sundial or hour clock. His left hand connected to his right elbow, then the hand of the same side would fall from his ear to his arm. When he had first used the sign while talking to his brother, Keith responded “Ding-dong, one-o-clock!” The running joke ran too far when his contact name changed from “Shiro” to “Grandfather clock” in his cellphone. Give the boy an inch with a joke and he’ll steal not a mile but acres from you, and he’ll leave you wondering if all the teasing was really worth it in the first place.

 

Shiro pulled the camry next to the curb, waited for the approaching cars to pass him with a whistle, and walked around the back to the passenger door. The moment it peeled from it’s frame, the service dog jumped from the seat and into his companion, throwing the man off balance not by surprise but by his growing weight. Every day, without fail, Spirit would leap into Shiro’s chest. When the deaf soldier and the once tiny German shepherd had first met, the relationship was solidified by this silly bound of faith, instinctively tenderly yet out of place and unprofessional for a service dog, his brother had tried to convince him. 

“He’s still a dog, Keith, and I’m still a kid,” Shiro had told him in return, and that was the end of that. 

With Spirit leading the way, tail wagging behind him, the two entered the townhouse. It was quaint, with a frank and subtly rustic exterior, no porch to decorate the three-tiered stairwell and landing that led to the door, bare of any matting or plants. On the other side of the faded wooden door, one became immediately aware of the second floor, the intruding walls with their tightly-fit foyer revealing the next flight of stairs, leading to his floor. The first floor, used mostly for storage and boxes frequented by the landlord, stacked neatly in a parlor once housing a well-used living room, was the remnants of that past which still remained partially intact. An old chaise draped in a white woven blanket, an oriental partition made of delicate paper and hand-painted swans, and a cabinet chest holding wedding china and party wares- all three prior possessions of their mother. The door, typically, was locked close.

The second floor wasn’t too wide nor was it big. There was approximately a good two feet between the threshold of the stairs and the door to his apartment, the most peripheral of that space filled with one table, covered in a layer of dirt, and sitting on top of it another layer of mixed-matched vases and bowls brimming with flowers and succulents and tiny knick-knacks. Under the table was a dog bowl and two pairs of slippers- red and black, respectively.

Spirit seated himself patiently in front of the door, tail still wagging anxiously, while Shiro searched for his keys.

“Don’t worry,” he wanted to tell his dog, “Keith isn’t home- yet.”

His red beach-cruiser was missing, on most days thrown on the floor carelessly at the foot of the front door. No wonder it was so run-down, the deep red paint chipping away to reveal a rusting shade of metal underneath that was scarred with deep pockets and potholes in its wiry bones. 

When the door opened, Spirit trekked inside, the other end of her leash now loose from Shiro’s grip. There were no doors in the apartment, with exception to the two bathrooms available in the flat. With this ease of access, Spirit could inspect every nook and cranny of the humble makings of a home, weaving between the living room and the kitchen, one bedroom to the next. As he performed this daily ritual, Shiro closed the door behind him and strolled into his bedroom, stopping to give Spirit an affectionate scratch on his neck, which he always appreciated. He glanced in the mirror on his dresser quickly, rustling with his rapidly greying hair, tugging it to the right and then the left, and being unsatisfied with neither, left it dangling in the middle of his forehead. Before he could rummage through his drawers, Spirit began to bark at him, gingerly pawing at his left shin.

Shiro smiled down at him, and together, the two walked into the bathroom. The dog watched as he opened the medicine cabinet- concealed behind the mirror -displaying three shelves organized into neatly filed rows of translucent-orange prescription bottles, drugstore necessities, and a supply of soap bars and shaving razors. Front and center on the first shelf, Shiro picked his lucky bottle- ZOLOFT, FIFTY MILLIGRAMS, as labeled on the bottle. Spirit’s eyes followed the bottle, watching the blue pills shake in their bottle. The dog sniffed at Shiro’s hands and barked it’s approval. As procedure, he took one pill and swallowed it with water under the supervision of his service dog.  
Spirit followed him back into the bedroom, dodging a shirt or two flying from the dresser as he hopped onto the edge of the bed. The dog yawned, settling into the corner of the covers comfortably, watching from afar as his companion paced back and forth between the the drawers hanging precariously from his dresser and the closet next to the bathroom, brimming with a rack of almost identical suits. An expression of uncertainty finally edged itself onto Shiro’s face. 

Do I tuck in the shirt or do leave it untucked? He pondered, one side tucked and the other untucked. Tucked, he decided, reaching for a belt.  
Do I wear the suede shoes or the leather shoes? He pondered again, weighing the two options in both of his hands. Or the third- sneakers? He cringed at the idea as he pulled on his suede boots.

Admiring his final choices in the mirror, he then whistled to his service dog. With his hands, he signed the word, “stay”, and with this one unspoken syllable, the dog understood his new command. Spirit followed him to the door, trailing behind his heels as he searched through his pockets, reviewing everything on him one last time: his cellphone, which never left it’s constant state of vibrate; his wallet, snugly-fit in his front-pocket; and his watch, tapping against the glass face reaffirmingly with his prosthetic arm, just for a little good luck.

 

He parked his car in the pigeonholed parking garage behind the H&M store on Lincoln Road. A regular by now, he purchased his pass with ease, smiling gratefully as the tollbooth woman pointed politely at the sign on the window: one dollar per hour. He handed her a five dollar bill, and in exchange she handed him a ticket; but before he could drive away, he raised his hand to stop her, knowing full well the polite pardon she was about to give, and slipped her a dollar bill. Confused, she looked to him for an explanation, but Shiro only smiled. She must have understood him then, because a grin suddenly appeared on her face, and he watched her lips form the rough outline of a “thank you” as he pulled into the garage. 

With a temporary parking spot for the camry, he jogged down the street, crossing the narrow alleyway to the Starbucks Coffee on the corner. He kept an eye on the counter, watching out for a familiar face in a black apron as he rounded the block. As the door swung open, the smell of grinded coffee beans was distinguishable, warm like a puff of smoke but as sweet as vanilla. It was the dog days of summertime, but a true Miamian would never pass off on an offer to a cup of coffee; and although the coffee at this always-fashionable chain was never even comparable to the cafe con leche sold on the street around this area, he found it easier to pay a good tip there.  
From the cash register, a barista waved wildly to Shiro. She was barely visible behind the bulky machine, obscuring almost all of her features, except her wild hair. 

“No night shift at the theater?” Shiro signed in his American Sign Language, chuckling.

“Nope,” Pidge signed back, in her Pidgin Signed English. “What will it be, the usual?”

Shiro nodded. “Don’t forget the extra shot!” He signed rapidly.

Pidge smirked as she tapped in his order, attuned to every detail of his specifications. Shiro had always been a very simple man, modest, in the sense that he had no appreciation for gaudiness, which he recognized as a consequence stemming from a lack of self-control in a person, as if their parents didn’t raise them right, or with enough discipline. Judgmental? Maybe just a bit. But such honesty gave him the freedom to put all his attention into the little things that surrounded him. He didn’t care for iced drinks topped with mountains of whip cream or colorful desserts served on sticks, because there was something traditionally attractive in the minimalism of a plain porcelain cup or naturally wholesome in a slice of yellow poundcake conservatively decorated with a glaze of icing. Details that others could not see, he could always see, rain or shine, night or day. He didn’t miss a beat.

But that didn’t hide his obvious oddities. Shiro never came in for a cup of coffee in the day, late in the evening, say, towards the latter half of dinnertime. And while he was always a well-rounded character, too cordial for polite, his bold mode of style would have never reflected such a personality. There was not a single bone in his body, not even a nerve, that could ever be summoned to create the illusion of a typical “bad boy”, a model-like paramour, that his evening attire seemed to always suggest. There were always rumours, of course, crass in nature, and even more tactless in proposition- speculation surrounding the sort of inappropriate entertainment most sought out at night (that being the most innocent of them all) to full-blown conspiracy theories of mobster-like pursuits in a hit-man position. None of them were near true.   
Ten minutes later, his espresso was ready, honorarily handed to him by Pidge. He laughed at the almost unreadable curvature of his name, handprinted in a thick green sharpie, next to one of her infamous smiley faces. She stuck her tongue out at him as he walked out the door. Shiro didn’t know her real name, and he wasn’t exactly sure of how she learned his, but there was a story behind the witless nickname. When the girl first realized he was deaf, she immediately jumped into her signs, rapidly motioning her hands with an excited expression- but the disconnect soon became obvious when she noticed (disappointingly) the slight disparity between his dialect and her’s: he was accustomed to ASL, and her PSE. On the receipt she handed him back, at the bottom, circled in that now quintessential green sharpie, was the word “Pidgin”, which he mistakenly took to be her given name.

Some nights that he came by, Pidge wasn’t there, and other nights, she was. But the girl always ensured that whoever was there to take his order, that there was always a way of communicating that order accurately. Ever since Shiro become a frequent customer, there was always a pad of paper and an ink pen sitting next to the cash register, ready for his order.

The espresso was piping hot in his hands, the heat rolling off the sides of the paper cup radiating into his palms and up to his wrists. Tentatively, he sipped from the cup, blinking away the tears welling up in his eyes, a reaction to the slight scald the drink left on his tongue. He took a deep breath and sighed; the streets were bustling that night with people, just sheer people, and it was hard for him to distinguish a married couple from a first date, a family of cousins and uncles and and grandparents huddling together from a large clique of intimate friends amalgamating as they crossed the intersection. As they passed him by, their lips moving so swiftly, so fiercely, it was intimidating. Were the married couple yelling at each other about a misstep in the conversation, or whispering with nostalgie about their younger days? Were the friends all shrieking with laughter at some asinine inside joke, or screaming about a badly split restaurant bill? Stepping onto Lincoln Road was like stepping onto a whole other plane of existence, one that was completely unknown to all but him. There was a time, of course, when he had been included in this prevalent inside puzzle too, a pivotal piece in fact, but the picture had changed so much he had completely lost his sense of self, when he was forced to observe the whole picture.

He glanced to his left, recognizing the white LED lights of a restaurant sign up ahead, and the neon glow shamed him with it’s glaring inscription out in the open, shameless. He imagined who could be at the bar there now, how there were still so many hours left in the night to endure, how long that shift would be for the boy who stood behind it, pouring alcohol, wondering if he would make enough tips that night to pay rent, or, even more importantly, medical insurance. 

Ashamed and suddenly conscience-stricken, aware of what little distance separated the restaurant and him, he ruefully gulped at his coffee, searing the flesh lining his cheeks, his tongue, and the roof of his mouth, washing away what little righteous resolve kept him gravitated toward his right. Shiro briskly turned towards his left, almost in a run.

 

Who’s Princess? Shiro wondered, stopping to read the chalkboard sign posted conveniently next to the main entrance door. 

Van Dyke’s Cafe never went a single summer night without a singer to host- and when Shiro thought never, he meant never. Only on rare occasions did he pay an evening visit to the club in the wintertime, when a special guest band or popular singer was scheduled to play that night, during the season’s steep holiday rush, but in the summertime? Van Dyke’s was booked full through the months of June to August, from the 1st to the 31st. If the sky was clear and the people were there underneath it, then you could expect to hear the sing-song rhythm of the best Latin music the city could offer. 

The noise evaded him. He could see it all, but never hear. His eyes told him that, on the first floor, in the impromptu dining room, that the servers were performing a hustle, a nonchalant two-step as they dashed between the bar-top tables cluttered with half-full drinks and drinking parties that were too full. Shiro glanced at this new pedigree of socialites; young and bright and glittering, absolutely starstruck by the new world they inhabited. Everything about them was bright, almost blinding- their drinks were iridescent, held in a daringly curtailed crystal rim, the glass which was seated recklessly in the thin fingers of a callow adult. Their reality was high-pitched, superficial in tone, a sequence of noises that were too complex and so exaggerated they lost the human component of the sound.

They lost the point of music. 

Shiro made his way up the stairs, each step narrow, hugging to the walls that glistened under the only lightbulb that hung from the ceiling. His fingers, cold and lifeless, barely touching the wall, drew a new line along the thin layer of paint, and with each step he took, another inch was added to this line. Like a pulse, it fell upwards and it fell downwards; it read the strength of the music, the bass, rippling through the walls like a heartbeat. 

Spotlights hung from the ceiling, a waxy golden hue emanating from their apertures, imitating a full moon. The ambiance was overcast by an aphotic opacity in the room. At the top of the stairwell, bodies shifted, chests puffed and heads bounced, in a crowd so thick it clogged what little space the only light could reach. He bit his lip. His fingers fell to his side as his shoulders pushed forward, working their way into the current of people. Shiro’s presence was hard to overlook; his bearing demanded attention, even when he had no want for it. It was his demeanor’s wont, the way he carried his large frame that took up so much space in a crowd full of humming and beating bodies. His eyes skimmed the height of the congregation, as it parted uneasily to let him through. 

The whole room was shaking, as if a shiver had ricocheted up the spine of the building. Shiro had never experienced such a sense of force- of fury, of kinetic potential resounding through music like this. It touched everything, visible and invisible, external and internal. The hearts of men, the minds of women- the sound, the raw nature of it, it captured their soul, the connection between the two. They listened, with their ears, not their eyes. They tapped their nails against their wine glass but their ears were perked; they shifted their gaze from the forehead to the neck but their back leaned. And for the first time, Shiro wanted to listen with his feet, his hands, his mouth, his body yearned to understand that beat, that orchestra of shame and passion, sentiment and anger, like real men and women did. 

He wanted to dance.

His muscles twitched intuitively; moving, veering without his permission. He deviated from the periphery, shuffling along the wall. His palm was pressed firmly against the wall, sliding against the solid surface as he moved deeper into the crowd. His attention swerved up and down, left to right, searching vigorously for someone, for anyone who would meet his gaze, obstructed by the dimness of the room.

But the dance floor wasn’t.

Was that really what he wanted? To just… dance?

Her hair shimmered in the singular light that hung overhead. Every strand was a thread of silver, lustrous, precious and rare, yet so innate did it look on her, that the woman appeared forthright, and honest. Her lips moved rapidly but effortlessly, as if she lived her life like that, fast and direct; but that she held fast to it, raising her closed eyes to the night sky as she savored it, each unheard syllable. Those silver locks brushed her shoulders, her cheeks, her hands- physics could not dictate her, it could not control anything on her. The laws of the known universe evaded her, in fact, they avoided her. How could eyes be two colors at once? How could skin so dark capture so much light? She proved it wrong. She proved them all wrong.

She was, indeed, a princess. Foreign, distant, and unattainable. She sat on no throne, but instead upon one of those white lounge chairs, with the suede contour and deep ambit of buttons. The arch of her back was rigid, and her lips were bound to the microphone, by some gravitational pull. A smile, eager, always piqued the corner of her mouth, naturally. It was almost instinctive.

He was drawn to her.

She was the first person Shiro could not read. The language of her heart eluded him.

As the last note left her tongue, she gasped. Her chest rose and fell, rose and fell. He could not imagine what she felt like, what new sensations she could be experiencing in that moment. But he could feel her heartbeat; it pulsated throughout her music, and he knew, just by the tremble of his palm as she sung, that her chest must feel tight, it had to feel tight. Did her skin tingle? Did her heart flutter? He had to know.

Everything she did was effortless. She stood from the lounge chair, the microphone held fast in her hands. The band enthusiastically cheered for her, pumping their fists and shaking their heads. She tapped her foot against the wooden floor, counting in her head, the only quiet thought in the room. 

The drums followed, then the trumpets.

“Quimbara, quimbara, quma quimbamba! Quimbara, quimbara, quma quimbamba! Ee Mama, e-ee Mama!”

Shiro continued to move, stretching for a better angle of the woman. The crowd broke into sporadic motion, building momentum as all the bodies in the room were incited into action. The band began to echo the verse, a point between silence and sound where she was granted the freedom to finally eye the growing mass, listening, waiting for her to raise her voice again. Her head was spinning with ecstasy as she skimmed the room, a dare forming on the tip of her tongue. She continued to scan the crowd, but her eyes were ensnared on a sudden beam of silver- a hand, atypical and florid. 

“La rumba me esta llamando, bombo, dile que ya voy. Que me espere un momentico asi, mientras canto un guaguancó.”

Their eyes met, as she, with brazen intent, turned in his direction.

“Dile que no es un desprecio-” she reached her hand to him, so far away yet so demanding. The people standing in front of him shuffled roughly, straining to see who she could be soliciting from the crowd. Shiro glanced to his left then his right, unsure of himself. The woman, her gaze still on him, withdrew her open hand, pressing it to her heart, as she sang “-Pues vive en mi corazón.”

She stepped towards him. 

“Mi vida es tan solo eso,” waving her hand at the surrounding dances, the vibrancy and the nightlife, “rumba buena y guaguancó!”

Shiro took her hand. She smiled, and he noticed, for the first time, that light shade of lipstick, a glistening pink. She pulled him onto the dancefloor. The band did not stop for them, beating wildly against their instruments with paramount pleasure. 

“Quimbara, quimbara, quma quimbamba!” they chanted. “Quimbara, quimbara, quma quimbamba!” 

She stole the lead from him, leaving no incentive for any contestment, nor for his concessions. She tested him: now centre-stage, she took his hand, impelling him to steer her into a spin, sliding onto the front of her heels as he conducted her hips with the palm of his right hand. It was not cold, like she had been expecting, but warm, and without intention, she leaned into the prosthetic, almost faithfully, unquestionably. She began to lean too far, but her mysterious partner caught her, gently twisting her into a dip. She caught on to his trick, extending her hand to the floor with a flourish, decorating the movement and dropping the microphone.

A laugh escaped her. Shiro pulled her to her feet, careful to avoid the now abandoned microphone.

“Pero que lio y dice: si quieres gozar, quieres bailar, quimbara, quimbara, quma quimbamba!”

Hand-in-hand, she sang as they moved, Shiro following her movement with uncanny rhythm. 

“Quimbara, quimbara, quma quimbamba! Pero lo baila Teresa y lo baila Juanito, quimbara, quimbara, quma quimbamba!” 

They turned, stepping together as they swayed their hips, kicking their legs to the peak of the harmony. 

“Oye cachin, cachan, cachan, cachumba! Quimbara, quimbara, quma quimbamba!”

She slid into him, leaning into his chest, arms stretched wide for him to catch and hold onto. As she moved towards his right, he moved towards her left, transitioning their bodies into a new direction as he lead her arm back and around his shoulder, pulling her body behind him as they strutted across the dancefloor. With a single gesture, she skipped behind him, disappearing then reappearing to his right; the moment she was visible in the corner of his eye, he tugged at her hand, and she followed, letting her body fall into a new revolution, the lights, the drinks, and the dresses blurring into one massive shade of pink, everything pink. As the electric momentum carried her, his hands moved down her body, from her hands to her waist to the base of her hips. And when the energy was gone, he lifted her, spinning her himself.

“Pero lo baila Teresa y también Joseito, quimbara, quimbara, quma quimbamba!”

The world came to a stop, rapid but persistent, slowing to details. She tapped his shoulder, signaling to him the near end of the song; she tapped the beat out, counting down the seconds. Shiro stomped his foot into the ground, standing erect at attention. Her hand was held firmly around his neck, holding tight to his body.

“Azuca!” the princess shouted, and she forgot to let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song is "Quimbara" sung and written by Celia Cruz.


End file.
